USS Langley (CV-1) - Wikipedia

Today in American Military History -- 1922
First US carrier commissioned: 'Langley' (CV-1). The Jupiter was converted into the first US aircraft carrier at the Navy Yard, Norfolk, Virginia, for the purpose of conducting experiments in the new idea of seaborne aviation. On 11 April 1920, she was renamed Langley in honor of Samuel Pierpont Langley, an American astronomer, physicist, aeronautics pioneer and aircraft engineer, and she was given the hull number CV-1. She recommissioned on 20 March 1922 with Commander Kenneth Whiting in command.

As the first American aircraft carrier, Langley was the scene of several seminal events in US naval aviation. On 17 October 1922, Lt. Virgil C. Griffin piloted the first plane—a Vought VE-7—launched from her decks. Though this was not the first time an airplane had taken off from a ship, and though Langley was not the first ship with an installed flight deck, this one launching was of monumental importance to the modern US Navy. The era of the aircraft carrier was born introducing into the navy what was to become the vanguard of its forces in the future.